Modern Vinyasa For the Masses

Teacher Calvin Corzine brings a functional yet challenging approach to yoga with an emphasis on making everyday movement easier.

- By Renee Marie Schettler, Photography by Ian Spanier

I grew up around yoga. My mom helped open a couple of the early studios in Los Angeles in the ’90s and early 2000s. I played sports the entire time and genuinely thought yoga was just stretching. Then, after graduating college, I tried it. I was drawn to the physical challenge. I was a guy with stiff muscles and a lot of injuries, yet I found that I could do yoga.

As soon as I completed my initial yoga teacher training, I was doing trainings and workshops. Every year I’d do a 200- or a 300-hour training. I studied in India for a while. I explored different styles and teachers. Many of them were more movement forward, such as Dice Iida-Klein, and I picked up different ways of thinking about sequencing. I learned to interweave different elements into my classes.

Then in 2018, I took Functional Range Conditioning training, which is about understanding how certain exercises for flexibility and mobility can benefit your everyday life.

My teaching has evolved to include whatever I’m doing or studying at the time. I train in jiujitsu, I lift weights, I do resistance training, I run. It all works its way into my teaching. How I teach now is different than how I taught when I first began. My teaching style is always evolving.